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RANGE MANAGEMENT IN NEW MEXICO. 85 
Fenced inclosures also make possible the classification of the stock. 
The steers may be taken out of the cow herd, thereby increasing to 
some degree the fecundity. Young animals may be kept in pastures 
containing only their own kind. Uniformity 4 in the grading of the 
animals makes them more attractive and more ele Saale when 
the buyer is inspecting them. It makes possible the weaning of the 
calves at the proper age, which allows their mothers to recover flesh 
while carrying their young. 
Quarantine and disease eradication.—The importance of a fence for 
use in the control and eradication of various diseases that attack 
range animals is excellently set forth in a petition ' recently presented 
to the President of the United States by those residents of south- 
eastern New Mexico who are either directly or indirectly interested 
in stock raising. It reads as follows: 
In addition to what has been said herein as to the manifest advantages of the indi- 
vidual control of the range, it should be remembered that the splendid work which 
has for the past twelve years been carried on by the Bureau of Animal Industry would 
be very greatly facilitated. The officials of this department have done excellent and 
efficient work in clearing this part of New Mexico of various infectious diseases to 
which cattle and sheep are subject; but they have been greatly hampered and their 
work delayed and made infinitely more expensive and difficult by the fact that there 
has been no method whatever of isolating such infected herds as graze on the public 
domain. It is practically impossible to thoroughly eradicate even the least virulent 
of these diseases, such as scabies, pleuro-pneumonia, and anthrax, as long as the 
diseased animals can not be permanently isolated from the healthy ones, which, with 
herds running at large, is impossible. If under the present conditions of the range 
such an infection as foot-and-mouth disease, which has appeared twice in the United 
States in the past twelve years, should become distributed, the cattle industry would 
be practically annihilated. It has been fully demonstrated in this and other districts 
that where animals were under control in privately owned pastures, the eradication 
of disease has been entirely practicable, while at the same time in contiguous open 
ranges vast herds have perished as a result of these diseases, and their owners have 
been practically ruined. 
Feeding range stock.—Very little feeding. of range stock has been 
done in New Mexico for any purpose whatever, and it is still a com- 
mon practice to let animals die of starvation if there is not sufficient 
feed on the range to maintain them. Aside from the humanitarian 
argument, this is really very poor business, with meat at its present 
price. 
Within the past decade a considerable area of the State has come 
into cultivation by the development of various irrigation enterprises 
or by dry-farming methods. In consequence, a much greater area 
of land, previously some of the best grazing land of the State, has 
ceased temporarily to be used for this purpose; but in all the dry- 
farming area (where at present less than half the land is occupied, 
1 Written by ex-Governor Hagerman, of New Mexico. 
